Splinter Review

Splinter compares favourably with recent high-profile essays in the 'vicious vegetation' sub-genre (The Ruins, The Happening) and even does what it does with less fuss than The Mist. It coops up a few characters, who come on at first as stereotypes but gain depth as the crisis develops, in a gas station convenience store, at the mercy of splinters which invade human hosts. They twist flesh with bone-breaking nastiness, extruding quill-like splinters and either agglomorate into a many-legged, cannily not-shown-in-detail monster or throw off independent Beast With Five Fingers-like crawling, leaping hands.

White trash escaped convict Dennis (Shane Whigham, Tigerland) and his junkie girlfriend Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) break down in the middle of a National Park forest, and hijack Seth (Paul Costanzo, Road Trip), a biology phd candidate, and Polly (Jill Wagner, Blade: The Series), his more capable girlfriend. Seth and Polly have just decided they don’t like camping in the wild woods, but make the mistake of stopping to help. Dennis gets a splinter in his finger while changing a flat tire and the infection spreads up his arm. It's more serious in tone than Tremors, but takes a similar approach to its unknown menace – Seth overcomes his fear of a situation he understands all too well, with a gun-toting redneck pushing him around, by getting fascinated with the weird science life-cycle of the monster. Deducing that the thing tracks its prey by heat, Seth brings his body temperature down with ice-packs to venture out to get a car – while the surprisingly sensitive Dennis and the surprisingly tough Polly improvise and make use of whatever comes to hand on the shelves (screwdrivers, lighter fluid, fireworks) to fend off the upsetting hybrid monster.

Name-to-watch, British-born director Toby Wilkins (whose next project is The Grudge 3), working from a script by Kai Barry and Ian Shorr, knows enough to give only the briefest flashes of the many-legged, several-headed creature - relying instead on basic, jittery suspense situations and decent performances to work up the tension. It moves too fast to trip over the more lunatic aspects of its premise and manages a little panicky humour without descending into all-out camp or even playing to the sod-the-characterisation-let’s-burst-some-skulls school of, say, Feast. It’s fun, but it remembers to be creepy and heft a bit of emotional weight too.

The views or opinions expressed in this Blog post are entirely those of Kim Newman and do not reflect the views or opinions of Icon Film Distribution Limited or its group companies, affiliates or employees.